Recipe CXV - Gentse Waterzooi

I'm back. Sorry I was away for such a long time - I have been incredibly stressed, and cooking had become a necessity rather than a pleasure. But I'm returning with this incredibly easy and remarkably tasty Belgian dish from the city of Ghent. French, as well as Belgian food, relies heavily on the use of butter in preparation. This is no different and adds most deliciously to the overall flavour. It takes relatively little effort and will make you smile when you put it in your mouth.

Ingredients:

One leek

Two tablespoons butter

Two carrots, peeled and diced

Four medium-sized potatoes, peeled and quartered

Salt and freshly ground pepper (usually white, but I used black)

1 litre of chicken stock or hot, salted water if none available

Two fresh bay leaves

Three sprigs of fresh parsley,

Three sprigs of chopped parsley to garnish later

Three sprigs of fresh thyme

Two large boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into large chunks

Half a litre of pouring cream

1 large egg yolk

Some crusty bread (e.g. baguette) for dipping

Instructions:

Melt the butter in a high-sided frying pan on a medium heat. Sauté the vegetables until they are soft, putting in some salt and pepper.

Put in the sprig of parsley, thyme and the bay leaves, and then add the potatoes and most essentially the stock or the hot water. You normally need chicken stock, but because you are about to add pieces of raw chicken to poach in the liquid, hot water straight from the kettle with some more salt should do the trick in an emergency.

So when you have added the liquid, put in the pieces of chicken and cover and poach for 10 to 20 minutes. It may look like a mess right now, but soon it is going to transform itself into something unbelievable...

Take a pouring jug, siphon off an egg yolk and add the cream. Stir them well. Take a little of the hot liquid from the pan so as not to shock it when it goes into the pan itself. Pour it in, add the chopped parsley and watch it become so incredibly tempting. Don't wait for too long before serving!

Although the photo doesn't do it justice, I have to admit...

Serve it in large bowls with some fresh bread.

Recipe CV - Chicken Breast in Creamy Bacon and Mushroom Sauce

Sorry for the recent lack of posts - I've had quite a lot to do recently renovating the house, painting and whatnot, and then there's the little matter of work. But now I have a dry run through to October, so I hope to pick up a little more momentum...

This recipe is so easy and a real crowd pleaser, going really well alongside the rocket salad recipe of last time. I bought a metallic frying pan last year specifically for meats. One of those that gets rustier the longer you use them. They cook meat really well and I couldn't ever imagine not using one for this type of dinner. 

Ingredients:

2 to 4 chicken breasts

Some thinly diced bacon

An onion

Some sliced mushrooms

Some cream

Some black peppercorns

Some Italian pasta or Greek krithiraki, potatoes or rice

*no salt!!!

Instructions:

Slice the chicken breast exactly as you like it. I prefer large pieces for this, but there is something to be said for fork-sized pieces. Fry the chicken breast in a little olive oil. Keep turning and pressing all the time. Season the chicken with some of the pepper. Add the bacon and onions for about five minutes before transferring them to their own pan.

Add the mushrooms and a little more pepper. After some time you will need to add the cream. Do you want to reduce the sauce? Put it in early. Do you want to have a lot of cream? Put it in 5-10 minutes before serving.

In the meantime, boil the pasta, and keep turning the chicken!!

To present, this is the perfect recipe to think about ways of making the dish attractive and appetising. I like to serve the sauce in a round mini-bowl on the plate, so people can make up their minds where to pour it. Some like it on their meat, some on their side dishes, me all over...

The sauce is salty enough, so don't worry about that. It is just the base - do some experimenting: you could also add ground or whole green peppercorns, white wine or so many other things to it.

Recipe XCVIII - Hungarian Paprika Chicken

A part of the world brimming with culture and tradition, from the cowboy-like farmers of the Puszta plains past the talented Gipsy musicians enchanting Budapest to the noble rot winemakers of Tokaj, Hungary is a country that makes central Europe that little bit more like an ancestral homeland. What the locals speak of course, is incomprehensible: surrounded by Slavic and Germanic language speakers, Hungarian is from the incomprehensible Finno-Ugric strain and subtitlers give the Chinese a run for their money in one of the TV and film world's most thankless professions. Which may explain why they dub everything. And why, quite bafflingly, only 35% of Hungarians speak a foreign language. Nevertheless, when I was there, I found the food to be sensational, even if I needed to point at other diners' plates to get what I wanted.
This dish is one of the easiest and most delicious things you will ever cook, and you should immediately go out and buy the ingredients.

Ingredients:2 dessertspoonfuls of paprika*
1 dessertspoonful of plain flour*
1 large pinch of Cayenne pepper*
10 crushed peppercorns*
600g chicken breast
5-7 ripe tomatoes, quartered
2 onions, chopped
1 red or green pepper, cut into strips
1 pot of sour cream

300ml chicken stock
Some odourless oil

*Put these ingredients in a pot and mix thoroughly together

Instructions:
Put the chicken in a high-sided frying pan and fry until sealed. Add the onions, and stir up until they release their aroma. Sprinkle liberally all the spices over the meat and onions and mix well.

Add the tomatoes and crush them to release their juices. 

Pour over the chicken stock before the ingredients stick to the bottom, add the peppers and simmer with the lid on for up to 2 hours.

Just before you serve, pour sour cream into it and stir to form a marbled effect.



Serve with rice or boiled potatoes.

Recipe LIX - Coronation Chicken

It's the 60th Jubilee of the accession to the throne of Her Majesty the Queen and I wanted to do something extra special today to play my part in this historic occasion, the likes of which I will never see again. Coronation chicken was the brainchild of two ladies: a florist and a chef, for the coronation in 1953. The combination of ingredients is quite startling as you will see, but the final result is simply delicious, a stroke of genius.



Ingredients:
For the chicken part:
6 spring onions
8 cloves of garlic
900g chicken breasts
Fresh ground pepper
Salt to taste

For the sauce:
1 chopped onion
1 tbsp curry powder
2 bay leaves
1 tbsp tomato purée
juice of half of a lemon
85ml/3fl oz red wine
150ml tap water
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 tbsp sugar
425ml/15fl oz mayonnaise
2-3 tbsp apricot jam (YES, YOU READ THIS CORRECTLY)
2-3 tbsp whipped cream
1 tbsp chopped green coriander



Instructions:
Put some water into a deep, rounded pan and add the spring onions, salt, pepper and chopped garlic. Once steaming, add the chicken and simmer for a good half an hour until the meat is cooked through. Then set it aside with a lid on to cool and for the flavours to work in.



While this is taking place, cut up your onion, put it into a saucepan and fry in olive or vegetable oil for a few minutes until soft. Then add the curry powder and let it mix in. Add the bay leaves, wine, tomato purée and the water, and let it gently come to a boil. Add the sugar, lemon juice and freshly ground black pepper and turn down the heat. Allow it to simmer for 5 to 10 minutes, thickening slightly.



Strain the larger bits from the sauce, and leave it to cool next to the chicken. Spend this time cutting up the chicken into bitesize pieces and whipping some cream..



Now comes the weird bit.
Spoon your mayonnaise and apricot jam into a large bowl. Pour in the liquid part of the sauce, and thoroughly fold it in. Add the whipped cream and with the aid of a blender on very slow, turn it into a full consistency.



Serve as a side dish, starter or as a feature in a buffet.

The leftover spring onions in water and the larger parts of the sauce make an ideal soup.
This dish is probably the most satisfying thing I have made in my kitchen. For although it contains some wacky combinations, it was simple, fast and utterly rewarding.
Long Live Her Majesty The Queen!

Recipe LIV - Breaded Chicken Breasts on a Bed of Green Beans with Polenta and Coriander Scrambled Egg

Bit of a mixed bag this week. As you may have noticed by now, I hate throwing raw ingredients away after they've been used for their primary function. That accounts for the scrambled egg. It actually made a very nice accompaniment. I'm not going to go into detail about polenta today, as the main purpose of this recipe is the breading. As you see in the first photo, I've put everything in order from top to bottom (left to right in my kitchen).



Ingredients:
1cm-thick sliced chicken (or turkey) breasts
3 bowls:
Bowl 1 with some flour in
Bowl 2 with three whisked eggs in
Bowl 3 with some finely ground breadcrumbs in
I add some Herbes de Provence to the breadcrumbs

Instructions:
Salt your chicken breast on both sides, pick it up with your fingers or a fork, and place it in the flour, covering it on both sides.



Take it from there into the eggs and cover it completely.



Move it from the egg into the breadcrumbs and cover it fully. Then put it in the pan and repeat with the other pieces you have.



Serve with green beans, polenta and the egg (see after the photo for details).



Coriander Scrambled Egg
I took a small amount of fresh green coriander and put it in the pan after the chicken had been there. I put some salt and fresh black pepper in the egg and poured it into the pan on top of the coriander, which had been gently frying for only one minute.

Green Beans
I steamed the beans until they were al dente. Then, in a pan with butter and olive oil, I fried one chopped onion and three roughly chopped cloves of garlic. I sweated the onion for three minutes, put in the garlic and then the beans, stirring constantly for three minutes or so.

Polenta
There are the conventional starch side-dishes: potatoes, pasta and rice are the most obvious. Polenta should really be the fourth, but because it is quite time-consuming, it is only really a bit-part player. I love polenta very much and will include it in a recipe in the coming weeks. Promise!